Some questions; is the energy return (EROEI) better than the 1.25 claimed for conventional ethanol? I see the energy sapping distillation step is still needed. Can the process be made continuous? 30 hour batches seems cumbersome. Can the products blend easily (say 50/50) with conventional petrol and diesel?

The media is just that -- media, not news. They braodcast what they are fed, which is political one-liners, not facts, news, or information. Since most politicians don't know anything about this stuff, they fight over whatever headline grabs the uninformed voter.

One thing Bush has been good at is grabbing credit for whatever technology did make the headlines (after the fact of cours): hydrogen economy, switchgrass, even the Mars lander he wanted credit for.

At last an industrial chemical process to do what should not be done except on materials othewise destined for landfills. All other cellulostic materials should be delivered to enrich the soil so that people can eat.

A direct, efficient process for making natural gas into liquid methanol is a major goal of industrial chemistry. Menthanol is a good enough fuel for all ground transportation needs. The low energy density makes commercial aircraft operation more expensive and difficult than with jet fuel, but still possible for short range.

Nuclear reactors with chemical plants to produce liquid fuels from CO2 and water are the ultimate cheapest answer to the fuel problem. The sun, with nuclear energy, produced liquid and solid fuels in an inefficient way and we have used much of them. Now nuclear energy can do it in a far more efficient way and recycle green-house gases faster than nature does.

Electricity will be used for plug-in-hybrids, but planes need liquid (or solid pure carbon powder) fuels.

..HG..

"..extracted for 18 h....
continued for another 12 h..."

The long dwell times make for a big pipeline if you want significant quantities in a continuous process.

Gasification is a quick process pipeline that has flexible inputs and versatile outputs.

@Engineer-Poet

The efficiency of a gasification process can be about 80 %, i.e., 80 % of biomass thermal energy is converted in the thermal energy of the synthesis gas. Synthesis gas to liquids is about 50 % efficient. The overall thermal efficiency is about 30 to 50 %. That's quite high, and no additional inputs of any chemicals are needed.

If gasification were the answer, we wouldn't need forums like this. Pyrolysis and gasification both definitely have cost effectiveness issues. This method appears to beat out fermentative ethanol on every count. It will need some process optimization for sure, but let's think about it - a cheap, nontoxic, nonvolatile, nonhydrophilic fuel made using nothing more sophisticated than HCl... doesn't sound bad.

"If gasification were the answer, we wouldn't need forums like this..."

We don't need forums like this. This forum does nothing. We do not set energy policy nor form huge capital investment. I fail to see the logic in that statement.

I have read that there are millions of NG vehicles in the world but only 150,000 of them in the U.S. and most of those are not personal automobiles.

There are duel fueled vehicles that run on NG or gasoline. I think that the main objection is the large tank and short range. ANG may be able to solve both problems.

Quoth Henric:

The efficiency of a gasification process can be about 80 %, i.e., 80 % of biomass thermal energy is converted in the thermal energy of the synthesis gas. Synthesis gas to liquids is about 50 % efficient. The overall thermal efficiency is about 30 to 50 %. That's quite high...

If we can get rid of the gasification and synthesis processes with a chemical reaction going on at less than the boiling point of water, so much the better.  However, the gains from this will be nothing compared to what we'll get from electrification.

Electrification can not be done - there will never be a good storage unit.

Lots of electrification requires no storage at all, e.g. electrified rail to replace diesel trains and diesel trucks.  Today's batteries are sufficient to give 120 miles range in a sufficiently aerodynamic vehicle for under $30000 (Aptera).  You only run into "cannot" if you demand petroleum-vehicle equivalence in all or most categories from a pure EV.  This is not a problem for PHEV.

You know your argument is a failure when GM is bringing your "impossibility" to market in about 2 years.

Engineer, so you are of the opinion that Li-ion batteries are an adequate storage unit for transportation purposes.

They are very expensive to make

have you thought about how much CO2 is emitted when one such battery is made in the factory?

A gallon of gasoline contains about 33.7 kWh of energy; at 20% conversion efficiency, it will put 6.7 kWh to the wheels.  It will produce about 19 pounds of CO2 upon combustion.  A kilogram of Li-ion batteries will hold on the order of 100 Wh, so it takes about 67 cycles at 100% DoD to put the same amount of energy to the wheels.  The lifetime of a modern non-cobalt Li-ion cell can be upwards of 2000 cycles, replacing about 30 gallons of gasoline.  If this kilogram of Li-ion battery takes 500 grams of carbon to make, it will put about 4 pounds of CO2 into the atmosphere.  This makes it about 1/150 as carbon-intensive as liquid fuel.

They have short lifecycle, considerable loses on charging/discharging.

where are you going to dump old batteries?

Recycling is expensive and emit CO2?

The whole infrastructure of the battery manufacturing/charging/disposing of and recycling is a huge mess in my opinion. And not very efficient.

Liquid hydrocarbon fuels have huge advantages. ICE is simple and efficient.

BtL fuels are easy to make. No emissions, simple infrastructure. Wood is collected by hand, and hauled to the BtL plant with a horse-drawn carriage. No emmisios, simple and clean. What do you think?

1. BTL fuels are expensive, more expensive than petroleum even at today's prices.
2. If the infrastructure was simple, we'd have a lot of it.  Instead, we have mostly laboratory-scale plants for petroleum-compatible liquid fuels or processes like rapid pyrolysis which yield highly acid, low-energy-density bio-oil.
3. If you think the implied amount of horse crap is "clean", you're dreaming.
4. If you want to be one of the people employed at subsistence standard of living to gather wood, go right ahead.  This is your fantasy, not mine.
5. If you think bio-fuel plants have zero emissions, you should listen to the odor complaints from the CWT plant in Carthage, MO.

Where do you get the 20 % tank to wheels though?

If ICE is 35%, then TtoW is going to be only a little less, like 30%, 5% lost in the transmission.

Where I live there are no fossil fuel sources at all. But there are lots of forests and woody biomass stuff (and no, corn does not grow in this climate, it's too cold for that). I don't want to by fuel from the big boys across the border.

BtL is very logical.

Even if you need to keep using ICEs for a while, you could convert biomass to charcoal (burning the off-gas to make electricity, or perhaps CHP) and then use the charcoal in gasogenes.  You would not incur the 50-70% losses in the BtL process.  What's the big advantage of BtL?  That you can sell it through a pump with an oil-company logo on it?

The existing fleet gets liquids, future HEV's will need them too.

I am not going to wait until somebody gives me some kind of superbattery BEV which there is even no infrastructure to charge.